Transportation deprivation among the elderly is a phenomenon which has stimulated costly policy responses even though its complexity is largely unappreciated. For administrative convenience, the elderly are often defined by chronological age exclusively, even though they are a very heterogeneous social category. Perceptions of transportation disadvantage are conditioned by a wide variety of social, structural factors which are better indicators of need than is "age" as well as by professional norms of service providers. Consequently, there appears to be ample justification for suspecting that perceptions of need are grossly imperfect guides to the formulation of transportation policy. An intensive secondary analysis of selected survey data bases is proposed here. The aim will be to search for inconsistencies both within and between the data bases and reconcile them by drawing attention away from age per se and toward more policy relevant factors that may be highly correlated with age. The goal is to enable service providers and planners to link more confidently proposed transportation policy responses to needs of specific subgroups of the elderly. Such policy fine-tuning will be an important step toward responding effectively and efficiently to pockets of elderly with actual transportation disadvantages while avoiding costly and misguided attempts to meet alleged universal needs too often presumed to be dictated by advanced age alone.